


leave your mark on me

by fuzzy_paint



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, Fingerfucking, PWP, implied Bellamy/Clarke/Raven UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-30
Updated: 2015-04-30
Packaged: 2018-03-26 13:21:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3852424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuzzy_paint/pseuds/fuzzy_paint
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I thought it just went around the eyes," Clarke says, shivering as Anya smears ash in the divot of Clarke's clavicle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	leave your mark on me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magisterequitum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterequitum/gifts).



> For Jordan, who once left a prompt (The 100, Anya/Clarke, Grounder rituals involving naked bodies; or Anya is very into Clarke's naked tits and Clarke is very into Anya's naked thighs) during one of hariboo's ficathons, and didn't realize what she was getting into. (Almost three months later, god).
> 
> Unbeta'd, all mistakes are mine.

"I thought it just went around the eyes," Clarke says, shivering as Anya smears ash in the divot of Clarke's clavicle. The room is cold and Anya's fingers are worse, carrying the harshness of winter every time she puts them to Clarke's skin. 

Yet when Anya pulls away, it's even colder, somehow. Clarke is bare from the waist up, and even with the fire nearby, the room is almost as cold as the forest, as bad as the burn of snow, melting in her hands or soaking through her shoes. 

The ashes, even fresh from the fire, offer no heat. 

Despite months on the ground, Clarke still anticipates the steady cool air of the Ark, constant and never changing. Even Raven's heating system for Camp Jaha can't keep the freezing air from crawling into every opening at every opportunity, making everyone shake under their piles of furs and leather. The ground is a myriad of hot and cold and wet and dry, and too many of her people have developed low ragged coughs that linger, sometimes for weeks, from sicknesses as simple as runny noses to those as dangerous as pneumonia. 

Anya circles around Clarke to paint ash across the wing of her shoulder blade. Everywhere she touches, goosebumps follow, rising up and making her skin feel taut. Her nipples tighten into hard little buds from the cold, but more from the drift of Anya's fingers, though Anya has left Clarke's breasts untouched. She's left much of Clarke's chest clean of ash, and Clarke is unsettled in her belly, twitchy from waiting. 

Anya rests her hand in the middle of Clarke's back, stealing her warmth. Clarke doesn't quite flinch. But she does hold herself still after that, mouth dry, and blinking away the urge to steal some of that warmth back. 

After the moment has stretched for longer than she can stand, Clarke clears her throat. "I can do this myself-"

Anya snorts, drawing lines over Clarke's spine. "You are the leader of your people. You have no second."

"Not the only one," Clarke mutters, glancing at the door. "Why-"

"Should I call for Bellamy?" Anya rubs black marks down Clarke's bicep and into the bend of Clarke's elbow. She leans in until Clarke's shoulder presses against her chest and Anya's mouth is almost at Clarke's ear. "Or for your Raven?"

"They're-" 

Of course they'd be doing this too. Having this done to them, for them. But who would do this for Bellamy? Who would stand before him with ash on her fingers and touch his bare chest, his broad shoulders, and mark him as a grounder? As Trigedakru? 

Echo? One of the remaining hundred? 

Raven? 

She clears her throat again as Anya circles around to face her. "Who," she croaks, words failing when the back of Anya's hand brushes against Clarke's breast. 

Anya smiles, for any given measurement of smiling. A smirk, maybe. She dips her fingers into her bowl of ash. "Don't worry. They're attended. Your mother, too, though she won't go into battle."

Anya's gaze slides down Clarke's body, not lingering, not even really looking except abstractly, like she's studying a blank canvas before marking it. 

Clarke flushes and almost looks away. 

Anya steps close and presses into Clarke's collarbone, this time on her other side. She follows the same motions as before, settling the ash like a cape about her shoulders. She does nothing more than draw a few long swipes before her fingers trail down Clarke's spine and disappear, but Clarke swallows, mouth as dry as her lips. She waits for Anya to move, to say something, to keep spreading ash over her skin. Anything. 

But trying to outwait Anya has always been fruitless. 

Clarke clears her throat. 

Again. 

Maybe she's getting sick. Standing half naked in the cold, even sheltered from the snow and wind as they are this deep underground, can't be good for anyone. 

Instead of suggesting it, she asks, "Shouldn't you be doing this with Lexa?" 

Anya says nothing, does nothing, for so long that Clarke turns to her. She meets Anya's eyes, her face unreadable, and Clarke has a sudden urge to teach Anya chess. 

The sharp longing for Wells is nothing new, not dulled by time but painfully accepted. Clarke lets it settle in her throat and swallows it down. 

Anya goes to the fire. She takes another piece of wood from it and grinds it down with a pestle, stamping out the embers. When she turns her head, there is something in her eyes, and Clarke almost crosses her arms. She stops before she can smear whatever pattern Anya's created. 

Anya sets the bowl aside and puts her hands flat on the table, back to Clarke. "The Commander has others. They will do this for her." 

And isn't that telling. Clarke tries not to read too much into the set of Anya's shoulders or the turn of her mouth. Anya has always been hard to read, but the grounders - the Trigedakru - are not as mysterious as they once were. 

It was not Clarke Lexa shut out after the Mountain continued to breathe, and Anya will not thank her for picking at this like a scab.

Clarke reaches for the bowl. "Here, I'll do you." 

Anya grabs Clarke's wrist, holding her away from the ash. 

Clarke blinks, and looks at her, frowning. "It'll be faster if we do this at the same time." 

Anya says nothing, and Clarke searches for her mistake. 

Maybe it's not about speed. About faster. About just getting it done. Maybe it's about something else, something Anya hasn't told her, something the Trigedakru treasure. Why else would Anya come to her and request that Clarke do this? Why else would it be such a private thing - they are tucked away, alone, in one of the rooms connected to Polis' underground network of tunnels. She has seen none of them put ash to their faces. She hadn't even known they did more than their eyes. 

But she doesn't like it, this talk of leaders and seconds and the way Anya's eyes shutter even more the longer she refuses Clarke the bowl. 

"You wore ash when we first met," Clarke says, trying again. "Shouldn't you..." 

Anya looks at her for a long time before she finally relaxes her grip. She turns her face to the fire. She does not fidget. There is no waver in her voice when she says, "I was a leader then."

"You're still a leader." 

"My gonakru is only twenty-one," she says. Her hands are loose fists, but it's the only indication of any discomfort. "I have no second." 

"Others wear it," Clarke says. "Lincoln, Octavia. Not just your leaders. Why not- what does it mean? That you. Are you not allowed anymore?" 

But this is even more dangerous ground than Lexa. They've been free of Mount Weather's threat for months, but even a shattered mountain cannot break the shame of three hundred dead. Anya carries it like she carries all her scars: hidden away and only found if you looked. 

Clarke's been looking. 

"The ash is a battle cry," Anya says. "A warning, a threat. The ash tells our enemies who they should fear most."

And who they should target, but Clarke keeps that thought to herself. Her bright hair is a banner as much as any ash, when Clarke of the Sky People stands as ambassador before their enemies and before their allies and the tales of her spread even further than any Ark survivor has ever even seen. 

"Then you should definitely wear it," Clarke says. "Take off your…" 

Clarke shuts her mouth. 

She can't actually imagine Anya rolling her eyes, but her stare is much the same. Slowly, she sheds her coat, then more efficiently, she works at undoing the buckles and straps and ties of the armor beneath. She takes off her necklace of wire and bone and the long brown and white feather threaded on the chain and sets it aside with care. 

Her hands linger over the laces of her pants, and Clarke blinks. Is ash supposed to go there, too? Anya hadn't made any move to take Clarke's pants. She hadn't even suggested it. 

Clarke swallows; had she simply been waiting? Had she thought Clarke might balk? 

But Anya lets her hands fall to her side, her pants untouched, and she waits while Clarke looks. She lingers on the scar on Anya's shoulder, the tattoo on her arm, the dark nipples of her-

Clarke puts her fingers in the bowl. She rubs them together, spreading the ash between them. "You burn your dead." 

"We are closest to death in battle." Anya swipes her fingers across her own shoulder. "We should remember that. You should remember that." 

Clarke does not want to think about death. Not now. 

She gestures to the dark streak over Anya's shoulder. "I thought you weren't supposed to do that yourself."

Anya looks at her, measuring, and then she stands still, her hands down. 

Clarke steps forward. Not to put the ash to Anya's eyes or to her shoulder, or lower, where Anya hasn't touched yet on Clarke's body, where she might not ever touch on Clarke's body, but circling around to her back. 

She pushes aside the thick, single braid of Anya's hair and pauses to count the marks across Anya's shoulders before she realizes what she's doing and forces herself to stop. Who is she to count the marks of others? Clarke doesn't have enough skin to carry even a fraction of the deaths on her hands. 

Anya's kill marks aren't like Anya's guard, whose name Clarke has never learned. They're not like the mass of burned flesh he showed off before Clarke slit his throat. Not like the neat row on Tris's shoulder either, five simple marks marching in a line. 

She would've carried more by now had she lived; maybe she would've started a pattern like Anya's, brands large and small, intertwining and spiraling across her shoulders to join at her spine, following the vertebrae all the way down. 

Did they go even further? 

She opens her mouth to ask who did it for her, but stops before the words even reach her throat. She's never seen a grounder's kill mark pressed into their skin. She's never seen one of them apply a tattoo, never even seen any of them put the ash to their bodies until now. 

Her fingers itch to unweave Anya's marks, and Clarke wonders how many times she'll draw this until it she grows tired of looking. Will she try to recreate what it must have been, once upon a time? Or if she'll draw it as is: marred by the large scar on Anya's back, the one that spans Clarke's entire hand spread wide, from the tip of her littlest finger to the end of her thumb? 

Maybe it's not the way the Trigedakru do it - is it a tree? it could be - or how any of the other twelve do it, but Clarke thinks about putting color there, creating the turn of a galaxy between Anya's shoulder blades or an arc of a wing across her entire back. 

The grounders have ink, though Clarke has only seen them wear black, but people used to have all sorts of colors marked on their skin. Before the war, before the bombs, before the Ark. They used to, didn't they? 

Maybe someday they'll find a way, but for now, Clarke only has ash, and only her fingers as her pencil.

Anya sucks in air at the first touch, almost a gasp, almost a protest. 

Clarke draws back. "Does it still hurt?"

"All wounds hurt," Anya says, and then she falls silent. 

Clarke takes her time weaving the ash through Anya's kill marks. She hesitates before tracing the surgery scars from her bullet wound, but eagerly fills in the blanks of the tattoo on her arm, seeking until her hand forms over the swell of Anya's bicep. 

These too, what do they mean? All of them wear ink - on their arms, on their bodies, even on their faces, but none of them have explained why. Not to anyone, as far as Clarke knew, though she knows a few of her people have asked. A few have even talked about getting them, Miller and Harper and Jones, but Trigedakru is as reluctant to talk about their ink as they are about the ash. 

Circling around her, Clarke studies the lines of Anya's face. That day on the bridge, she wore it in just the hollows of her eyes. Lexa wears it in great swaths across her face, as if she'd mixed too much water in and let it dry as it dripped down her face. Lincoln wears it like spikes through his eyes, diamonds cutting from forehead to the bottom of his cheeks. Octavia does the same. So does Indra, but Indra wears it so thin, she might as well not be wearing it at all. 

Indra is deadly in battle; Clarke has seen her fight. She's seen the way she trains her warriors, and even moreso her seconds, and the way she leads. Why doesn't she wear it thick and proud if it is to mark their most deadly? 

"Indra has her reasons," Anya says. 

They all have their reasons, don't they, even Clarke who is less of the Trigedakru than Octavia. Less than Bellamy, who is seen as more Trigedakru for complicated reasons none of them fully understand, in part because of his connection to Octavia or because Echo demanded it after what he did for them in the Mountain. 

"Why me," Clarke says, withdrawing her touch from Anya completely. She rubs the rough grains of ash between her fingers. Then, in a bid for time, she breaks up the few chunks of wood that remain in the bowl. "Why would you ask me-"

"Klok kom Skaikru," Anya says, cupping her face. There is no ash on her thumb when she slides it over Clarke's cheek, no ash at all on any of her fingers. 

Clarke swallows, reaching for the bowl, drawing an absent squiggle in the bottom. "I didn't wear it into the Mountain."

Anya rubs a small circle at the corner of Clarke's eye. "You were Skaikru then."

"I'm still Skaikru now." 

"Yes," Anya says, as if that answered anything. 

"We go to war in a few hours," Clarke says. "You want me to wear it." 

"We have been at war for days, Clarke. That your diplomacy almost worked does not change that." She traces over Clarke's jaw before she pulls away completely. "War will always come. We will always fight. You cannot escape that." 

That much is true. The ground thrives in blood and once more, it thirsts. Bellamy's words could not sway it. Raven's tech did not discourage it, and all the stories of all the deeds of Clarke of the Sky People only seemed to make it worse. 

Many will bleed come first light, and Clarke does not want to think about who else she will soon lose. 

"They are not like your people," Anya says. "They did not come here to survive, they did not start a war without intending it. They came here to take. They came for blood, but we will not let them have what is ours." 

"You need to protect Raven," Clarke says, "We can't let them get to her-" 

Clarke puts more ash to Anya's face. Her fingers shake only a little as she slides them over Anya's eyelids. 

"The enemy will not reach Raven," Anya says. "I will not let them." 

Clarke pauses. "Your gonakru is only twenty-one." 

It is more than none, more than one, but it is not the unit she used to lead. It is not what she had when she came against Clarke.

"We are few," Anya says. "I would not have agreed to your plan if I didn't think they were capable." 

"Our plan," Clare says, and then she stops because Anya knows, because Anya helped tear apart Bellamy's plans as best she could, talked around Raven's tech, and then, tucked away in a forgotten airlock, the four of them reforged it into something stronger, something smarter, before Clarke brought it before the rest Coalition. 

People will die tomorrow because their plans will never be perfect enough. People will die tomorrow because she asked them to, and they too saw only Clarke of the Sky People, Clarke of the stories, Clarke who always saved everyone. 

"Raven will not fall," Anya says, and Clarke shakes her head, her mouth tight. 

"And who will protect you?" Clarke asks. "Your gonakru is young, and most of them untried, and some of them from the Ark-"

"My fight will not end tomorrow." 

"You don't know that. We can't know that." 

"You cannot let fear rule you, Clarke. You cannot lead your people like that."

"I'm not a warrior," Clarke says. "I'm not like you, or Indra, or even Octavia. I'm not-" 

"If I did not think you ready," Anya says, "I would not-"

"Yes, you would." 

Anya's smile is soft, and small, and it tells Clarke everything and nothing all at once. "Yes, I would. You've fought well, Clarke, and you will fight well when the battle comes. As you have done in the past."

"That's not what I. Why don't you have more people?" 

Tension creeps back into Anya's shoulders. It tries to force itself onto her expression, but she holds it back by the tight line of her mouth. 

Anya turns away from Clarke, facing the fire. 

Clarke clutches the bowl close to her chest, looking at her feet, at the candles spread over the table, at the furs tacked to the walls. At anything but Anya. 

She startles when Anya takes the bowl from her. Anya draws a pattern in the ash. She picks some up and rubs it between her fingers. She could say that they were done. She could end this all right now. Clarke wouldn't know any different, except she would. 

She would. 

But Anya sighs, so soft Clarke almost misses it. "Lexa could order them to follow me. If she chose, she could. But warriors will not respect a leader they cannot trust and I will not have warriors who do not trust me." 

"You have warriors that will follow you," she says. "More than just your gonakru. I've seen you training with them-"

"Not enough. Not yet." Her mouth thins, and Clarke wonders what politics she's missing. She learns something new about them every day, some legend, some way of life, something she never expected. Even though they've been allies for months, she still has so much to learn about them. 

Clarke slides her thumb over Anya's cheekbone and under her eyes, watching as they close halfway, but remain open enough to shine from the firelight. 

Clarke puts ash on the other side, and Anya sighs, eyes sliding all the way shut. 

Clarke adds more, slowly, deliberately, watching the flutter of Anya's eyelashes. She catches the slight part to Anya's mouth, and she adds even more. She does not spread it too far across her face, but thickens it until it is impossible to see the skin beneath, watching Anya's lower lip instead of her fingers. 

She must hesitate for too long; Anya opens her eyes, startling against the black of the ash. She coats her fingers in Clarke's bowl. She looks at it for a moment and then searches Clarke's face before she sets them against Clarke's cheekbone. She holds still before she smears the ash over her skin. 

"When I last did this for Lexa," she says, her voice soft, "she was still my second." 

Clarke blinks. "You're not my second, Anya." 

"No," she says, something far away in her eyes. 

"You don't talk about her much. Will you tell me?" And then, taking a closer look at Anya's face, Clarke adds, "someday?" 

Anya's silence is answer enough, but she tilts Clarke's head back and says, "perhaps someday."

She dips down over the apple of her cheek and arcs up to the corner of her eye. Clarke probably looks more like the pictures of the raccoons in Earth Studies than anything truly fierce. People might talk about her in whispers, they might spread stories of Clarke of the Sky People, getting more and more outrageous with every retelling. They might speak of a Clarke who stood against a Trigedakru army and killed them all, save one, Clarke who broke open the Mountain to rain retribution down on those who would hurt hers, Clarke who forged the Coalition into her weapon. 

Or so the stories say. 

But the stories are as wrong as they are true, and they taste of ash in her mouth. Clarke did none of it alone. She did all of it with Bellamy at her side, with Raven, with Monty, Miller, with an endless list of names to back her up at every turn. Anya was one of those names. 

Is one of those names. 

Anya held her back as Lincoln slit Cage Wallace's throat, and Clarke stood at her side as Anya's new sword slid easily between Dante Wallace's ribs. She was there when Maya begged merciful deaths for the mountain children. Anya glanced to Clarke before any other, and Clarke was there when Anya said, "the children are innocents," and Clarke saw Lexa waver, and Clarke heard _ripa, ripa_ in her head. 

Anya knows exactly what happened, for all of it, for every single moment, because Anya was with her for most of it. 

Clarke steps into the space between them. She touches the ash on Anya's collarbone, and her thumb slides down, stopping just over the swell of Anya's breast. She meets Anya's startled gaze, and she puts her thumb over the tip of Anya's nipple. The cold coats her skin, but the bead of sweat slipping down Clarke's back is almost warm.

Anya is so very close. She smells of earth and leaves and though her hands are cold, she is not, even though they aren't touching. Not touching at all. She does not move into Clarke, nor does she turn away. But then, Anya will watch and Anya will wait, except when provoked by anger or grief, and Clarke can always count on Anya to see through all the bullshit. 

Anya catches Clarke's wrist, but instead of pushing her away, she holds Clarke still, her fingers tight against Clarke's pulse. Clarke drags her thumb down. And pushes up, just enough to lift Anya's breast against the pull of gravity. She doesn't imagine the tremor that shakes through Anya's body, faint as it is, and Clarke strokes her nipple again, just to see it one more time. 

Anya inhales, pushing her breast against Clarke's knuckles. She moves to palm it, to feel the weight of it, and that's when Anya pushes her away. 

Clarke starts to pull away. "Is this not. You didn't-" 

"No," Anya says. "I didn't." 

"Is it because of my age? Because I'm younger than you?"

Anya snorts. 

Clarke catches Anya's wrists, wrapping her hands around the bones there, the strength there before she can pull away. "But it is because of something. You don't... You've never..."

"What of Bellamy?" Anya's voice gets lower, sharper. "What of Raven?" 

Clarke's grip tightens. She opens her mouth to tell Anya it's not like that, that it wasn't at all what she thought, but wasn't it? Couldn't it be, eventually? It's been the three of them since Raven built her first bomb and they destroyed that bridge. Since the Ring of Fire, since they found each other after Clarke escaped from Mount Weather. Every step she's taken, they've taken it with her. She will not sacrifice that for anything. 

Anya is still, unmoving, watching. 

"I need them," Clarke says, cupping Anya's face, swallowing. "I need them, like I need you." 

Anya kisses her. For only a brief moment, she presses their mouths together before she backs away. 

Clarke does not let her go far. Anya's wrists are as cold as her fingers, and Clarke wants to chase away all of it and leave only heat in her wake, nothing but her marks all over Anya's skin. Her hands are cold, but her waist is burning, the curve of her hip even more so. Anya catches her, holds her still. She slides her hand over Clarke's stomach. When she looks this time, there is nothing abstract about it; she is looking and seeing Clarke. Just Clarke. 

People who have never met her see something that Clarke isn't. Anya knows everything Clarke has done, and everything she has not. 

Clarke kisses her again, kisses her because she wants to, because she must, and because Anya kisses her back, mouth open, tongue sliding against Clarke's. Anya is taller, leaning down, tilting Clarke's face up to meet her mouth at a better angle. Her hair tickles against Clarke's skin, some of it escaping the heavy braid down her back. Clarke pulls her closer, glides her fingers across the brands on her back like she might read all of Anya's secrets from the marks. 

Clarke breathes messily through her nose. They break apart, but she doesn't want to let go. She doesn't feel cold now, not with Anya pressed up against her. It's warmer still with the kiss of teeth under her jaw, and then lower, and of course Anya would go for the throat. Of course she would. 

The love bite blooms warm under Anya's attention; it will be an impressive mark, and as Anya sooths over it with her tongue, Clarke decides she will wear her hair tied back in the morning, her collar pressed flat against the slope of her shoulder. She smirks and presses her fingers into Anya's lower back, against the bumps of her spine, the marks of her past, the grit of ash under her fingers. 

Anya licks all the way up Clarke's jaw, and there's half a moment when she thinks Anya might say something in her ear, but she pulls away with a wet drag of her tongue against Clarke's cheek, and she turns Clarke's head so their mouths meet again. There is a hint of ash on her tongue, and neither of their lips are smooth, chapped from the bitter wind that never seems to end. 

Clarke shivers, suddenly remembering the cold. Without Anya flush against her, it is worse, creeping in like it always seems to do, and she can only begin to count the months, weeks, days until summer. Winter is her least favorite thing about the ground, despite how pretty she thought her first snowfall. But right now, all she wants is to pull Anya under a pile of fur and leather, wants to cocoon with her until the heat is unbearable, until they are nothing but sweaty limbs and flushed faces.

Clarke moans low in her throat; Anya catches her lip in her teeth, releases it after a careful tug. Anya has a pink tint to her cheeks, her mouth pleasantly swollen, and hair hanging loose from her braid. Clarke doesn't even remember tugging it free. 

Clarke trails two fingers through a smear of ash on Anya's chest. "Will we have to redo this?"

"Eventually," Anya says. She has black marks in the shape of fingers on her face, clear prints in the ash, smearing over the bridge of her nose. She sets a knuckle under Clarke's chin, tilting it up, and takes a moment to look at her. What she sees makes her smile, just a curve to her mouth, more pronounced on one side. 

"Is this part of…" Clarke stops, swipes some ash onto her fingers. "Is this what you do, when you put ash on someone?" 

Anya smirks, says no like it's the most ridiculous thing she's ever heard. 

Clarke narrows her eyes. "Does it actually go anywhere but the eyes?" 

Anya laughs, a rare sound, a beautiful sound, and puts a palm print of ash over Clarke's breast. "Of course," she says, and there is a lightness there that Clarke wants to dissect, to pin down and understand, but Anya leans in for another kiss, and Clarke is successfully distracted. 

Anya's hands are still cold, so cold; Clarke yelps when Anya palms Clarke's breasts, her nipples tighten under Anya's hands, sending tremors down her spine. 

"They'll warm," Anya says, absently, still looking at Clarke's breasts. First one, then the other, fitting them in her palms, pressing against Clarke's chest so they contour to her hands, her thumbs resting side by side over her sternum. 

Clarke pulls at Anya's pants, shoves them down her thighs, and bends down to help take them off completely. Her fingers clench into fists, and she wipes them clean in the pool of fabric at their feet as she looks up at Anya, bare but for the few trinkets she has woven in her hair, the bead from Lincoln and a wire she knows came from Raven. 

When Clarke stands, Anya cups Clarke's face, and Clarke puts her tongue in Anya's mouth. Anya catches it with her teeth, scrapes across the top when Clarke pulls back. She says Clarke's name the way the Trikru say it, klark, murmurs a few indistinct words after, and then she sets to work at the laces of Clarke's pants. 

Clarke knocks her hands away and backs her into the table. A candle tips, and Anya catches it before it spills wax and flame everywhere and burns the place down. She blows it out, setting it aside, and puts out a few more for good measure. Clarke does not care, pushing Anya's thighs apart and stepping between them. 

Candles flicker all around them, the fire still bright, just like in the clips from old earth films. The stories the people once told are nothing like they tell here and now. A hundred years from now, what will they say? What will they remember about Clarke of the Sky People and Anya kom Trigedakru? 

Will they talk about this, Anya's cunt wet against the leather of her pants, her grip tight on Clarke's breast as she rides Clarke's thigh in slow grinding circles? If they ever tell stories about the war that marches steadily toward them, the battle they face in only a few hours, will they know to speak of this, or will it become just another thing nobody truly sees? 

Anya spreads her thighs and tries to pull Clarke closer, one hand tight in Clarke's hair, the other still at her breast, thumb still working at her poor abused nipple, tender from so much contact, too much, too much, and Clarke won't admit that, won't even breathe a protest because then Anya might stop. 

Clarke puts her thumb over Anya's clit, and slips a finger inside her. First one, then two when Anya lifts her chin and demands another. She is wet, slick, hot, and Clarke clenches her thighs together, trying to ease the ache between them, god, she _wants._

Anya does not take her eyes away from Clarke's, but Clarke keeps trying to take in everything, all her skin and all her scars and all of Anya spread out before her. This, she could draw this, Anya bare and her legs open, welcoming, but there is no amount of graphite or color or shadowing that will capture the heat in her eyes or the soft bruise of her mouth. 

She could spend hours attempting to get it right, but those are hours she could use to touch, to taste, to have instead. To hear flesh on flesh, her fingers working Anya's cunt, Anya sucking air harshly through her teeth, or the low whine in her throat whenever Clark's fingers curl inside her. The flush has spread to her chest, looking more red than pink, slick with sweat, even in the cold. Anya's eyes are startling against the ash smeared under them and across her nose. They flutter closed, then open, like she won't, can't, stop watching Clarke, can't stop seeing her-

She tightens her grip on Anya's thigh, the strong, smooth muscle there, twitching as Clarke pushes her fingers in deeper, spasming when Clarke's thumb rubs circles over Anya's clit. 

Anya's hand falls to the table, gripping the edge until her knuckles turn white. She holds onto Clarke's left breast with her other, pressing her thumb to her nipple, harder than before, rubbing, pushing, her nail dragging over the bud, until it's almost painful, and she's clenching down on Clarke's fingers, her head back, neck bared, lifting her hips up, up, up into Clarke's hands, again and again and again. She says nothing as she comes. Bites off whatever sound she starts to make in the back of her throat, but like a gasp, it wrenches out of her anyway.

Clarke leans her forehead against Anya's shoulder, presses her teeth into her lower lip. God. 

Anya's grip slowly eases, bit by bit until her hand is flat on the table. Clarke looks up, watches as Anya blinks a few times, then a few more, saying nothing while her breathing levels out. Clarke keeps her fingers moving, slower, gentler, chasing every twitch and every spasm until Anya catches Clarke's wrist and pushes her hand away. 

But not far. She kisses Clarke, licking over her lower lip then up across the top one. She eases her hand away from Clarke's breast, but not without one last swipe at her nipple. Clarke shudders, twitching, and opens her mouth even more, letting Anya taste her mouth how she wants. She wants to put her mouth between Anya's legs. She wants to lay her back on the table and kiss her, suck on her tongue until both their mouths are swollen, and fit herself between Anya's thighs and just push and grind until neither of them can think. She wants to see how wide open she can spread Anya's legs, wants to watch Anya touch herself, touch herself and look at Clarke and only Clarke, see her and only her. 

The ache in her belly smoulders, not quite waiting, as Anya presses quick, light touches over her hip, her side, her elbow where whatever ash was once there has been wiped away, as she dips her thumb into the back of Clarke's pants, as she swipes it over the swell of her ass. 

She seems content to merely touch without instigating anything further, despite how wet Clarke is, how ready she is for whatever Anya wants, but then Clarke catches her gaze, and her mouth goes dry. She tries to swallow, can't, tries to quell the rapid beat of her pulse, the sudden shake of her hands, and can't do that either. 

Anya puts her teeth to Clarke's wrist, leaves a wet kiss there, and another in her elbow, and then once more across her temple. She touches Clarke's mouth with two fingers, rough against her puffy, chapped lip. The ash on her face is a mess; the ash on her body is smeared even worse. Whatever pattern they'd marked is gone now. It can only be worse on Clarke's skin. Anya touches Clarke's face, a curl to her mouth, but she does not attempt to put the ash to rights. They must match, though without any concise pattern, and it seems obvious that everyone will know what they have been doing. 

Good. 

They won't look like warriors of the Trigedakru or of Skaikru or of any other people of the Coalition. They are separate, they are their own, and no one will take that from her. No one will hurt her small group of survivors, put them in cages or lie to them or pretend at allies ever again. Not without facing the repercussions. Not without facing Clarke of the Sky People and those that stand with her. 

The ash is a battle cry. It is a warning, and a threat both. Any enemies that do not mask their true intentions will know that. Any enemies lurking behind friendly smiles will soon know the truth. 

Anya is hers. She is hers just like Bellamy and Raven are hers, and Miller and Monty are hers, Octavia and Lincoln and the few from the original one hundred kids that still live. (Twenty-one. There are twenty-one of them left) They are hers, too. 

And she is theirs.


End file.
